Reformating/Deleting unused partitions
 

Hi all. I have an embedded x86 pc with a 64GB ssd. It's running windows compact currently but I want to get rid of that completely and run Linux instead. I have my own Linux build that I need to put on it. To do this I need to reformat/delete the windows partition completely, live boot it from a usb distro such as Damn Small Live and then netboot it using my own image.

Does anyone know how I can delete/format the windows partition completely from a Live DSL boot or install DSL over (to replace) windows? I tried this from a live DSL boot:
But that always returns a "FATAL" error, can't open disk. Typing "install" at the command line during boot starts installation but fails almost immediately. And when I try the graphical installer nothing happens. fdisk has the same result as cfdisk. any thoughts?

Are you sure it is /dev/hda when booted to DSL?

It might be /dev/sda ...or something else.

That's a good point. I'm not 100% sure, but /dev/sda is always the usb drive that I'm using to boot, so by formatting that I lose everything. Output from dmesg doesn't tell me anything about the hard drive at all. Is there another way to check?

I would boot to DSL and look in /dev/hdx... sdx...

Try mounting and look inside to be absolutely certain which is the windows drive - then umount and cfdisk.

DSL comes with a 2.4 kernel which may have problems with the hardware in your machine. I would give recent versions of Slitaz, Puppy or Tinycore a try.

Yes, using SliTaz seems to have resolved my problem. Thanks